Mariners' Hopes To Obtain Artifacts Of Titanic Proportion

Museum In Talks With Ship's Salvors

April 16, 2003|By MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS — Less than a year after taking delivery of the USS Monitor gun turret, The Mariners' Museum has entered negotiations that could add the luster of another world-famous ship to its internationally known maritime collection.

But numerous complications remain to be solved, Mariners' president and CEO John B. Hightower said, before the historic Civil War ironclad will share the bill with more than 6,000 objects recovered from the wreck of the Titanic.

"We have an ominous premonition about the costs -- that's the black cloud hanging over this arrangement," Hightower explained Tuesday, a day after the museum's talks with an Atlanta-based salvage company were made public in a Norfolk federal court hearing.

"But the Titanic exhibit that we did here in 1998 gives us a degree of comfort about the potential of this collection -- and it still seems to be to the museum's advantage to take advantage of this opportunity if we can."

Hightower's presence at the court hearing followed nearly four months of negotiations with R.M.S. Titanic Inc., which has conducted six research and recovery missions to the North Atlantic wreck since 1987.

But he originally approached the troubled company about a year ago as it struggled to profit from a collection that a federal judge ruled it must take care of but could not sell.

"I've been describing it as a lark -- as something that had a 9-to-1 chance," Hightower said, recalling his initial contact with the venture salvage firm. "But it looks like the odds have changed."

Under the court papers filed by R.M.S. Titanic on Monday, the company would donate all of the artifacts it has recovered -- including the ship's bell, whistle and helm -- to the museum in exchange for a tax deduction that could be worth millions of dollars.

The actual transfer would take place at least five years from the conclusion of any agreement, with the company receiving most of the profits from an ongoing program of traveling exhibits until that interim period is over.

Hightower cautioned that such an arrangement still has to be worked out in detail before the museum, which expects to complete a feasibility study within 6 to 9 months, could sign off on the deal.

The final settlement also must be accepted by the company's stockholders as well as the federal court, he said.

Among the museum's most pressing concerns are the costs of storing, conserving and displaying objects from a collection of more than 6,000 objects -- all of which would add to its existing challenge of raising $30 million for the USS Monitor Center.

The Mariners' also may suffer some backlash from other institutions because the artifacts were recovered by salvors rather than underwater archaeologists.

"R.M.S. Titanic is a commercial venture -- and that's a no-no in the world of maritime history museums," Hightower acknowledged.

"But isn't it better that the artifacts be donated to a respected museum for safekeeping and care rather than remain in the possession of R.M.S. Titanic? I really do regard this possibility as a case of The Mariners' Museum acting in behalf of the public good."

Eventually, the museum could profit handsomely, too, especially if it used its prestige to continue and enhance a Titanic traveling exhibit program that currently grosses an estimated $5 million a year.

Two museums in Europe, another in Canada and the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City have already expressed a strong interest in hosting any future shows produced by the Mariners', Hightower said.

The museum also hopes to duplicate the success of "Titanic: Fortune & Fate," a blockbuster exhibit that attracted nearly 250,000 people when it ran at the Mariners' during nine months in 1998. Attendance on weekends reached into the thousands, forcing the museum to set up a satellite parking site and bring visitors in by shuttle bus.

Of those visitors, more than 106,000 came from beyond the Peninsula, generating what a museum economic impact study estimated as $11.1 million in regional lodging sales and meal receipts.

"If we look at what happened at the Mariners' in 1998 -- and we look at what has happened with the traveling R.M.S. Titanic exhibits in other places -- the potential is great," says Newport News Tourism Development Office spokeswoman Suzanne Pearson.

"Just think about the number of books that have been written about the Titanic, the number of movies that have been made, the Broadway show. It's a very compelling story."

Similar observations came from historian John V. Quarstein, head of the Virginia War Museum and its associated historic sites, who has been an outspoken advocate of cultural tourism in the region.

"When you start thinking about shipwrecks, when you start thinking about famous ships, the epitome is the Titanic," Quarstein said.

"The Mariners' already has the Monitor. So this would give them two of the top five ships in history. The potential is limitless."

Mark St. John Erickson can be reached at 247-4783 or online at merickson@dailypress.com